Genesis block seems to have occupied a godly apparition with the cryptocurrency users. The block represents the birth of new cryptocurrency, as for years Bitcoin genesis address found BTC offerings as a way of acknowledging Satoshi. When a new virtual currency is born Genesis block lays its foundation stone, and so it happened with Ethereum that its initial address- 0x followed by 40 zeros- has found unsung popularity amongst the masses. Nonetheless, the most interesting twist to its tale is- the address has received $6 million in ether and over $500 million in ERC20 tokens.

So what has caused this erroneous venture? Do people think that Genesis block of crypto possess some holy spirit, which needs cryptocurrency offerings or these offerings restore the celestial genius of the creators? No, nothing of this sort but what has happened with Ethereum genesis address is mostly an accident. A simple human error which has caused much chaos amongst the users.

It was found that 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 is an easy to remember address that can also be entered with the stroke of one erred finger. Just a stroke and all your ERC20 tokens are finding their way to perpetuity. As for some Reddit users, the complaint is registered by them as follows,

“Is there any way to get the golem I sent to [the genesis address] back? I was transferring my tokens from my ethereum wallet to my ledger nano s and forgot to input an address before hitting send. Ethereum wallet apparently sends to [the genesis address] as a default. Has this happened to anyone else?”

This means that many wallets have kept Ethereum genesis block as their primary address. There is another set of heavy hearted users who claim that their total savings of 1,493 ETH were sent to the block in error. You would be surprised to know that in total, the genesis address has earned from over 750 transactions in three years, and at present holds over 7,000 ETH, worth $6 million, and more than 200 ERC20 tokens worth an unbelievable $517 million.

However, not all the transactions were errored, some of the tokens were intentionally airdropped, it means that they were deliberately sent to public ETH addresses. The record shows that during the early days of cryptocurrency, the address received Ether mostly- sometimes 100 ETH transactions at a time (at that time cryptocurrency was cheap). Now many ethereum based projects have taken off, and as a result, the stream of ETH gave access to ERC20 tokens.

The statistics for the genesis block stand at-

33,000 Aeternity

approximately half a million BAT

9.5 million Bytom

750,000 Golem

This is not the end the wallet holds many more ERC20 tokens. Nonetheless, Ethereum has more proper solutions to the lost tokens in comparison to bitcoin. The Bitcoin sent to its genesis block are deemed to be unrecoverable due to a compound of its architecture and Satoshi’s departure. However, Ethereum's founders still have access to the private key for this address; it should be permissible to create a smart contract that automatically rotates anything sent to it. Till the time Ethereum finds a way back to these lost tokens, the genesis address will extend to incorporate coins persistently (Consequently, to the agony of their unwilling senders).

Applancer is an open platform for discussion on all things like Blockchain , Cryptocurrency and Ico news updates. As such, the opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Applancer .